Summary
- After 20 years of delays, Martin Scorsese’s Frank Sinatra biopic may finally be made. The film will explore the singer’s dark side and alleged mob connections.
- The project has faced hurdles due to the Sinatra estate wanting a positive portrayal, but Scorsese aims for a raw and complex depiction.
- With the resurgence of music biopics and Scorsese’s industry respect, there’s hope this long-awaited film will see the light of day.
Even at 81 years old, Martin Scorsese shows no signs of slowing down. This week, it was officially announced that Scorsese would be shooting his previously announced film about the life of Jesus back to back with another feature. This one, still untitled, is set to be a biopic about the life of legendary singer Frank Sinatra, with the cast tentatively including Scorsese’s muse, Leonardo DiCaprio, as Ol’ Blue Eyes and Jennifer Lawrence as his second wife, actress Ava Gardner.
However, this isn’t the first time Scorsese has tried to make a film about Frank Sinatra. In fact, it’s a project he’s eyed on and off for over 20 years, and he almost moved forward with it twice before it was canceled both times. If the third time proves the charm, this film will join the company of Gangs of New York and Silence as a passion project for Scorsese that took decades to finally come to light. But why has his Sinatra film proven a particularly difficult nut to crack?
A Project 24 Years (At Least) in the Making
Martin Scorsese first formulated the idea for a biopic about Frank Sinatra back in 2000 (two years after the singer died from a heart attack), having been a lifelong fan of his music. The first version of the project had allegedly cast John Travolta as Sinatra and Tom Hanks as Dean Martin, his close friend and frequent collaborator. For reasons that have never come to light, development never progressed any further than this initial casting, and production was quietly canceled.
According to Variety, in 2009, Scorsese (with newfound clout after finally winning his long-delayed Oscar) revived the project, now looking to cast Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead. But Scorsese had no intentions of making another standard musician hagiography (especially after Walk Hard so effectively lampooned the genre just two years before). His pitch was “GoodFellas meets Nowhere Boy,” and it was set to span the entirety of the singer’s life, with different actors playing the role at various stages of his life. But most intriguing was the fact that he intended to explore one of the darkest parts of Sinatra’s celebrity – his alleged mob connections.
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As Sinatra’s star rose in the 1940s, he quickly caught the attention of the FBI following rumors that he’d dodged the WWII draft. Suspicions of him only continued to grow by 1950, as gangsters were regular patrons at the nightclubs he sang at, and he was close friends with notorious figures like Lucky Luciano, Bugsy Siegel, and Al Capone’s cousins. While he was never officially prosecuted for any specific mob-related activities, it’s widely suspected that the mob saw Sinatra as a way to expand into the entertainment industry and a legitimate face for their operation to embezzle in gambling rackets.
Obviously, the Sinatra estate wasn’t enthused about the possibility of Scorsese exploring this side of the singer. As such, the biopic stalled for several years until the director finally confirmed its cancelation in 2017, shortly after the release of his other decades-long passion project, Silence. As he explained to the Toronto Sun, “Certain things are very difficult for a family, and I totally understand. But, if they expect me to be doing it, they can’t hold back certain things. The problem is that the man was so complex. Everybody is so complex – but Sinatra in particular.”
Why Has It Taken So Long, And Could the Sinatra Biopic Finally Happen This Time?
The biggest and most obvious reason the film has taken so long to move forward, as previously mentioned, is that the Sinatra estate wants the singer to be portrayed in a positive light. Scorsese mentioned upon the project’s second cancelation that his visions differed with those of Frank’s daughter, Tina Sinatra, especially since he wanted to explore not only his mob connections but his alcoholism and violent side towards Ava Gardner. Tina, on the other hand, wanted the focus to be almost entirely on his musical legacy, as is typical of most music biopics.
However, logistical factors also likely kept the film from moving forward. Scorsese reportedly struggled with the intended screenwriter, Phil Alden Robertson, to condense Sinatra’s life into a coherent feature, as they both wished to jump back and forth through time, with different actors to play the singer at various stages of his life. Scorsese wanted Al Pacino to play an elderly Sinatra, as he stated in an interview with The Guardian:
“We can’t go through the greatest hits of Sinatra’s life… So the other way to go is to have three or four different Sinatras. Younger. Older. Middle-aged. Very old. You cut back and forth in time – and you do it through the music.”
It’s safe to assume another factor in the film’s cancelation is that they couldn’t quite crack this approach.
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But on paper, it at least seems like there are enough factors in Scorsese’s favor that he could finally bring this film to light this time. For one thing, music biopics have seen a resurgence since 2018’s Bohemian Rhapsody proved a surprise hit, and they now prove consistently successful at the box office regardless of the reviews. We’ve recently seen the Amy Winehouse biopic hit theaters in addition to the upcoming films about the lives of Bob Dylan and Michael Jackson, which should both be guaranteed to recoup their costs.
Additionally, Scorsese arguably holds even more respect in the industry now than ever. Since he’s getting older, it seems safe to assume major studios will be more willing to trust him with complete creative control. In addition, since another Scorsese project that jumped around in time, The Irishman, didn’t come to fruition until technology finally caught up with his vision, it seems feasible that the same could be true regarding his vision for his Sinatra film.
Sinatra’s Fate Still Up in the Air
All this being said, it must be emphasized that Tina Sinatra has not yet given her official blessing to the script. As such, it’s still not out of the question that the project could stall yet again, even as Scorsese has already started casting. But if it finally sees the light of day this time, it’s safe to assume that one of the greatest filmmakers of all time will deliver a fascinating portrait of one of the most iconic singers ever and that the two decades of stalled development will allow him to deliver the vision he wants.
